Me:I did.I thought Simon Fisher-Becker’s talk was
extremely entertaining.I really want to
see that again.Unfortunately, due to
the sound problems I couldn’t quite hear everything, but that wasn’t anyone’s
fault.Just one of those things.

Him:That was because of the bar.

Me:Yeah, the performances were
taking place in the same room as the main bar area.

Him:That’s just asking for
trouble.

Me:Well, it’s going to happen
isn’t it?There’s not much you can do
about it.The organisation was excellent
and we should do a big shout out to District 14.

Him:Yeah.

Me:They did a fantastic
job.It had a great atmosphere.

Him:I think they only let people
in who would add to the atmosphere.

Me:We got a Hull cab, didn’t
we?

Him:Yeah.

Me:But we went along to the
second company because the first one looked like the introductory paragraph of
a Clive Barker story.Or Thomas Ligotti
anyway.

Him:It certainly did look like
something out of a detective story.

Me:The work that’s gone into
some of the costumes that people were wearing…

Him:Yeah.

Me:There was screen accurate
stuff.What would you have said were the
best ones?

Him:The Stormtroopers.It wasn’t just the costume, they were
standing there and they were incredibly still.Made me uneasy. Whenever they’d slightly move – it was really
unsettling.We walked past the
Stormtroopers several times, but as for the other cosplayers, we didn’t get to
see too much of them.

Me:You’d glimpse them as they
were going past.

Him:I’m not gonna lie, bringing
your own parrot is-

Me:
Oh
yeah!The pirates with the parrots!

Him:Having an actual parrot adds
a lot.

Him by Me.

Me:Rev said that during the
Norman Lovett panel the parrots were heckling.

Him:First parrots and then
frogs.He didn’t have a good day as far
as animals were concerned.

Me:He was somewhat distracted
by the audience, but the audience were somewhat distracting.It was terrific.Really relaxed and fun and we got to meet
lots of nice people.Actually, there
wasn’t anyone unpleasant there, I would’ve said.

Him:Well, you don’t tend to
wander up to people and go, “Hello!Are
you an unpleasant person?”

Me:They usually announce
themselves, don’t they?“Hello!I’m a terribly unpleasant person and I’ve
come to make your life miserable!”

Me:I look more like a cat
reading a comix.I did have something to
end with but I’ve forgotten it.

Him:I thought that was it.I was going to sit here and be silent.And then you come out with, “I don’t know how
to end it now.”

Me:
That’s what
I was going to say!That’s only the
second convention we’ve both been to.

Him:I didn’t go to the first
one.

Me:You did.That’s the one you met Lis Sladen at.

Him:Yeah, but I’m certain I
didn’t go to a convention.I’d remember
that.

Me:It was a long time ago.

Him:Were there only about five
people there or something?

Me:No, it was busy.Anneke Wills was there; she got roped into
doing the raffle.Peter Miles was
there.And Andrew Beech.You spent a while talking to John Barrowman’s
aunt.

Him:I did?

Me:Yeah.

Him:“Hull Comic Con 2016!Reminiscing about previous comic cons!”

Me:Well, that time we were
there as guests and this time we were there as staff.

Him:We didn’t get paid.

Me:We got t-shirts and
pizza.What am I talking about?We weren’t guests at the first one!We were-

Him:‘Guests’.

Me:
Wouldn’t it
be nice if bodies like British Rail and the Department for Work and Pensions
referred to people as ‘guests’ rather than ‘customers’?And on that
bombshell.

Him:What noises do you want to
make?

Me:I’m typing it.

Him:We always make the noises
though.

Me:Alright.Do a parrot.

The Him does a parrot.

Me:That’s the noise you always make, whatever the animal!

The
Him does another parrot.

Me:Do a Dalek in distress.

Him:No.

From here you can see forever. And Killer BOB, if you squint.

1. There’s really not much to add,
but that’s never stopped me before, so...

We caught the helicopter from the Arctic
to Edinburgh, then clattered down the coast on the mainline. I read more than I’ve managed in months, while
the Him healed damaged pixel kingdoms and saved untold digital
generations. Or something. He certainly didn’t get any sleep.

The journey went smoothly and we glided
in Hull’s welcoming embrace right on time.
Rev strode up to meet us – he’s a lot taller, and more Wildling, than he
appears on podcasts – but overshot by a few feet. We met District 14’s Steve and Claire, who
gave us a lift back to Rev’s Memorabilia Manse where we’d be crashing. The Him went straight to bed, while I gaped
like a wannabe Maester at Rev’s pretty-damn-impressive Library Walls before
totally failing to sleep.

Convention day came and went in a bit of
a blur, but here’re my impressions.

Hull’s the friendliest city I’ve spent
more than a night in. You get the taste
of a city’s personality the moment the train doors slide open and, well, there’s
a reason I put quotes at the top, so let’s talk about conventions instead.

Rev's Memorabilia Manse

Comic conventions’ve become big business
as a direct result of pop culture – specifically Watchmen, but that’s a rant
for another book – and they’ve mutated as wider society’s moved into a new
chapter. There’s a lot to be said for
comparing conventions to other occasions where large like-minded groups come together, football matches, concerts, revolutions and
so on. It’s tribal and it’s comforting in a tribe if you feel you belong.
T-shirts that proclaim an interest aren't really a personality substitute, they're an easy way of spotting potential
allies in a scary world with a default setting that favours chaos and food chains. It’s no wonder that uniformed individuality
shifts products. Of course, anything truly subversive will eventually get absorbed into the
overall body of established and acceptable behaviour. It’s partly how our
culture inoculates itself against both change and memetic threats . Taken in
small enough doses, an immunity is built.
Failing that, you can always shout, “What’s that?” and switch mugs while they’re
distracted.

The Hull University building was huge enough to contain
its own Waterstones. That tells you
everything. Me and the Him picked up our
t-shirts, changed self-consciously in the toilets – another echo of being in a
band – and then wandered the building getting our bearings before the doors
opened to leak a steady, and seemingly relentless, river of folk. The sheer variety was astonishing. It felt like every demographic was
represented.

I introduced myself to the guests whose
microphone moments I was down to moderate, kidding myself this was to set their minds at rest. Truthfully, it
was so I could get to my fallback strategy of letting the audience ask the questions as
quickly as possible. To a one they were
friendly, cheerful, polite and- No. I’m not going to get too gushy just yet.

First up was the Doctor Who Comics
panel. I introduced Rachael Smith, Russ Leach and Lee Sullivan, bantered briefly and then threw them to the audience. The audience weren't hungry and threw them back. This caught me on the
hop, so I moved on to asking the questions that I wanted answers to. This seemed to work, so I stuck with it for
the rest of the day.

Adam Cheal’s talk about getting started
creating and publishing comics was eye-opening and sensible; the ‘really
attractive, thin and intelligent’ Russell Payne gave a beautiful presentation
about Jack ‘King’ Kirby’s work and legacy; despite being fruitier than maybe
one or two audience members were expecting Kate Russell’s, reading seemed to go
smoothly from where I was standing: in another nudge
to the day’s theme this was next to the mixing desk.

The Him and I collected our free pizza
and chatted about the atmosphere.
There’s a lot of talk about safe spaces on campuses that misses the point. Hull Comic Con 2016 however,
truly represented a safe space on a campus.

And that’s as gushy as I’m getting, so
here’s Rachael Smith’s portrait of us as cats instead.